Welcome to The Podcast News, a weekly recap of the latest & greatest podcast news and helpful tutorials curated specifically for podcast producers. My name is Aaron Dowd.

Here are the most interesting news articles and tutorials for the first week of January, 2020.

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1

A changing industry amps up podcasters’ ambitions

From Juleyka Lantigua-Williams on NiemanLab.org:

The soundbites about podcasting are captivating. “$1 billion in ad revenue in 2020.” “800,000 podcasts in existence.” “90 million Americans listening.” “You can win a Pulitzer!”

It’s all dizzying and exciting for people trying to cash in on the buzz. But some of us on the inside know that the hype and drive towards profit will force a lot of podcasters to decide if they’re a pro or a hobbyist.

I believe that’s a good thing.

Podcast hobbyists will experience 2020 as the year of reckoning. While some will be happy to produce an episode whenever they can find the time, others will leave full-time jobs and risk it all in podcasting. They’ll borrow money, drain their savings, and take a creative leap for a chance to be as financially fulfilled as they are artistically satisfied by making shows they love.

Current freelance podcast producers will find co-founders and go boldly together where each dared not go alone. They will incorporate, demand reasonable contracts, charge late fees, and reference knowledge banks like Werk It’s What Podcasting Pays Now and AIR’s Code of Fair Practices. They will take on technical and narrative challenges that will shed further light on what our genre and format can do. They will push their creativity to remain competitive but also raise their level of difficulty to stand out. And podcasting will be better for it.

Great observations from Juleyka here.

I was thinking last week about the very first podcast I ever made. It was very much a hobby, but my friends and I had a great time doing it. There's nothing wrong with podcasting as a hobby, in fact I think it provides a ton of benefits. Just maybe don't expect to make a bunch of money from it if you treat it like a hobby.

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2

Darknet Diaries Stats from 2019

From the Darknet Diaries website, a detailed look at the stats and analytics for the show in 2019. Really interesting to see what was effective and what wasn't for growing the audience.

These are some of my more significant marketing moves for the year. But above all, none of this would have made a bit of difference if our audience didn’t love the content and help spread the word. If they listened and left, we’d see no growth. If they listened but didn’t tell others, we’d see no growth. What you don’t notice on the chart are all the thousands and thousands of listeners who stopped listening. And it was only because we had more than that start listening and stick around that we saw this growth for the year. We believe word of mouth is by far the best strategy for building a large audience.

Marketing plan for 2020: make amazing episodes and continue building social media. Have also started working with new producers to create more episodes. The goal is to give Patreon supporters more bonus content.

Also worth noting: Blog posts like this are another way to get attention for a show and possibly get new listeners too, since people like me will share the link and talk about it. Smart marketing for sure.

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3

Podcasting 101: Publishing New Episodes To Podcast Directories

From Mike Murphy on Medium:

How long does it take for new episodes to show up in the directories?

I scheduled my podcast episode to publish at 7am EST. It's been 5-10 minutes and it's still not in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, etc. What's going on? Is something wrong? Did I mess up?

No. Directories do not update in real-time. When you schedule a new episode to publish at a certain time, you are scheduling the episode to publish to your RSS Feed and not the time it will be in the directories.

A great tutorial about podcast distribution and how RSS feeds work. I really like the tip about creating a document for your show that contains the description for your show and links to your show's RSS feed and the links for the various podcast apps/directories.

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That's going to do it for the free version of this week's episode. You can head over to thepodcastnews.substack.com to subscribe to support the show and get a longer, full version of these episodes, along with other member perks including:

1. Your name and a link to your website or podcast in the episode notes
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3. A special discounted rate for podcast consulting sessions

I'll talk to you next week. In the meantime, happy podcasting!

Aaron DowdJanuary 5, 2020

Thanks to Kato, Alexander, and Norman for supporting the show.

This show was produced by me, Aaron Dowd.Music and SM7B illustration by Sean McCabe.Hosting and technology by Simplecast.